He pulled over at the door and I got out and leaned my head back into the car.

"You're showing your true identity there, pal."

He smiled.

"Maybe.

"ach of the thirteen files was thin, containing the five-page protocol questionnaire supplied by the FBI O and the foundation, and usually just a few more pages Of ancillary notes or testimonials to the pressures of the job from colleagues of the deceased.

Most of the stories were the same. Job stress, alcohol, marital difficulty, depression. A basic formula for the police blues. But depression was the key ingredient. In almost all of the files depression of one sort or another was reported as attacking the victim from inside the job. However, only a handful mentioned that the victims were troubled by any specific case, unsolved or otherwise, that they had been assigned to investigate.

I did a quick read-through of the conclusion segment of each of the protocols and quickly eliminated several of the cases from my investigation because of varying factors ranging from the suicides being witnessed by others to their g place under circumstances precluding a setup. The remaimng eight cases were going to be more dffficult to whittle down because each, at least in the summary remarks, seemed to fit. In each of these cases there was some mention of specific cases burdening the victim. The burden of an unsolved case and the quotes from Poe were really all I had as far as a pattern went. So I stayed with it and made it the standard by which I judged whether these eight remaining cases could be part of a series of false suicides.

Following this as my own protocol led to the dropping of two more cases when I found references to the suicide notes. In each, the victim wrote to a specific person, a mother in one, a wife in the other, and asked for forgiveness and understanding. The notes contained nothing resembling a line of poetry or, actually, any kind of literature.

I dropped them and then I had six.

Reading one of the remaining files I came across the victim's suicide note-one line, like those left by my brother and Brooks-in an addendum containing the investigator's report. Reading the words sent a chilling, electric surge through me. For I knew them.

I am haunted by ill angels I quickly opened my notebook to the page where I had written the stanza from "Dream-Land" that Laurie Prine had read to me from the CD-ROM.

By a route obscure and lonely, Haunted by ill angels only, Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT, On a black throne reins upright, I have reached these lands but newly, From an ultimate dim ThuleFrom a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime, Out of SPACut of TTME